Drenched bodies surround me. Dazed yet sober, I feel superior to the craze. They seem so vulnerable so open. Sure, I’m out going enough. I have friends but I can’t see myself flailing my limbs around the likes of my enemies, my acquaintances, kind of friends, and her all at once. I couldn’t deal with all the remarks of “wow, you don’t live with a stick up your ass” or the accompanying looks of pity. She’s the only one who’s really seen me cut loose, unreserved. I trust her. She’s temporarily left me alone to take care of a friend, drunk out of her mind. I didn’t expect to be going to my first party as a senior in high school, never drunk, never drugged, but here we are, testing the waters.
She took me here. Holtzmann. I asked to come. She’s been to a few parties like these, says they don’t really do anything for her. She appreciates eating pizza and watching a movie with me more than dancing mindlessly, forgetting everything, and feeling like shit in the morning. She agrees to take me saying “some adventure isn’t bad every once in awhile”.
I was supposed to drink tonight, try it out. She was supposed to watch me, make sure I didn’t drown myself in alcohol, or accidently blow my ex in the basement bathroom. Instead, neither of us have touched anything but soda, I’m sitting alone watching the insanity unfold of gross teenage sweat mingling with other bodily fluids, as she holds someone’s hair back upstairs. I knew we should have stayed at her place and watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for the 400th time.
I feel so stupid. I asked to be here, yet I’m wallowing, waiting to gain some magic courage, but I’m just afraid. My mind is racing with too many preconceived notions about how I should feel about alcohol or weed and sure I’ve had sips of wine off my parents, and in church of course, but that’s different than downing a beer for fun. This just seems so trivial.
She’s back with a beer, sitting next to me on the floor, away from glazed over eyes and wandering fingers. “How is she?” I ask referring to the drunken mess she’d been helping a moment ago. “I guess fine, she back to making out with that guy with the weird mustache”. I scrunch up my nose, aware that she’s giggling at my reaction. Swatting her arm, I feign anger. She offers me a beer like she has been periodically through the night. Gently, unimposing. I shake my head, no. “sorry”, I say before I can stop myself, so I explain myself before she questions it. “I just don’t want to drink with everyone around. I thought I did, but I don’t, sorry.” My posture tightens, assuming the worst in this new environment. She soothes me with her hand on my shoulder first, then with her words. “Hey don’t be sorry, I wasn’t forcing you to do anything you don’t want. You’re allowed to change your mind, Er-Bear”. I’m back to not being tense with a single word of familiarity. “For the millionth time, stop calling me Er-bear”, I scoff, “it makes me feel like I’m 5”. “But you’re my teddy bear”, she insists, beaming ear to ear.
“Do you mind if I have a beer?” she changes the subject earnestly. “I know I said I wouldn’t, but since you’re not, I- I don’t plan on not remembering my name or going home with anyone else, I just-“ I smile at her, she stops rambling with a sigh. She reads the “yes” planted firmly in my eyes. “One beer, that’s it”, she promises. I nod, knowing I’d still be here if she was eight shots deep with her head in a toilet.
She cracks it open, and chugs a quarter of it down in one go. It looks difficult, like the fizz is fighting the gravity created in tilting the bottle upside down. Grotesque sounds of sharp dissent tell of each gulp coming out of the thinner end. Glug. Glug. Glug. She sighs, resolved when the bottle is once again right side up.
We’re quiet for awhile watching everyone as she sips her drink at differentiating intervals for the next 15 minutes before only a few white bubbles remain. She burps as the affects set in. It’s one beer, so she’s tipsy pretty quickly, but not taking her clothes off or shouting at strangers. I’ve gotten used to this version of her. Shiny eyes, seemingly always biting on her pink lips, playing with my fingers, asking me big questions in a small, feeble nature. She does this sometimes, gets a bottle of wine from an older friend, steals a bottle of something heavy from a small shop, loiters outside a convenience store waiting for someone to agree to buy her liquor. She drinks it alone in her apartment, the perks of losing your mother at age 5 and your dad being arrested at 15, and then cries away anything and everything. We’ve made it a routine of her coming by my house whenever she does so. I told her I needed to make sure she was still breathing on the nights when my text messages went unanswered. She agreed to come by after her slips into darkness, knocking on my window, four rhythmic beats, a pause, one more. She opens it, comes in, takes off her shoes, and climbs into bed with me. I hold her until the shaking stops.
“Are we even real?” she asks me incredulously, pulling at my thumb, pushing on my knuckles. “I don’t know” I say, because I’m not so sure all the time. She pleads on, she wants answers. I take her hand, stop her ministrations, place her index and middle fingers against the side of my neck. The pulse of my heart, mirroring the heavy bass of the music. “You feel that, don’t you?” I whisper and that seems to quench her musings for the moment. It’s light tonight, no wishes of death or unrelenting tears. I’m not cleaning a gash she obtained from drunken stumbling, she’s just here, quiet in her reverie. I’m thankful for the tranquility, even if it’s among loud booming, and glistening forms filled with liquid poison.
“You wanna head home?” she croaks, the beer bottle now empty on the floor. I nod, a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes, wanting to be away from the rambunctious beats of passion and unbalanced intentions. I offer to grab her keys from the kitchen where she’d left them. She sees if any drunk minors need a ride home.
A stillness. Overcome by waves of sound foreign to the ear, contrasting the melody of processed pop. A scream of desperation splitting my ears. A girl somewhere far off, but close enough. Atmosphere suddenly zooms into intoxicated mumbles. The music stops. I follow the scream.
It’s her. Holtzy. Well the screaming isn’t coming from her, but she’s pulling a guy off of the girl who is. His face looks familiar. His pants are at his ankles. He’s stumbling. Small girl still weeping, as she falls into a corner, holding herself.
Holtz is holding him up, keeping him from falling on top of the petrified victim. Brazen, he holds his weight, spins around to face her and throws his arm like a projectile toward her face. The projectile lands in the space, optimally, between her cheek, nose, and eye, claiming a stake in all three areas at once. Her head spins backwards as his arm follows all the way through with the movement. I’m stuck there, clasping her cold metal keys in one hand, digging nails into my palm with the other. Her body ricochets backward a few feet, pushing at throbbing skin and a bloody nose. He charges at her, fists ready, somehow sober enough to calculate the timing necessary in hand to hand combat, but not sober enough to understand the implications of his actions toward Ramona or the girl currently crying on the cement of the basement floor.
As their bodies make contact, she grabs hold of his wrist. All her strength goes into twisting it grotesquely behind his back, the position making him resemble a wounded pigeon. Crumbling underneath the unnatural position and the added pressure, he sinks to the ground groaning. She peels my eyes away from the character on the floor by grabbing hold up my wrist, less violent than the way she held his, pulling me up the stairs and out the front door without a look back.
Sitting in the drivers seat of her car always reminded me that material possessions didn’t always sustain emotional health. For example, Jillian's father was well off, bought her a car before she even got her learner’s permit, yet she drowned her sorrows in purchasable poison regularly. Her father was a surgeon, one of the best in the country, he tried to do best by his patients. He poured his soul into his only child, wished for the death of his wife to be a lie everyday.
Her father never downed bottles of tequila, smoked cigarettes to edge off the stress, or had any known vices. Instead his downfall came through the most unfortunate of accidents. He hit a pedestrian walking across a small side street late at night after a long shift at the hospital. With no witnesses or camera to prove that the light was green or that the man was running full speed, he had no alibi other than Jillian swearing that he was a good man, that he had made a mistake.
He described that night to his daughter so many times, and she had reiterated it even more times to me. He had jumped out of his car, saw the steady face of a startled man unconscious. He started compressions immediately after dialing 911, gave him mouth to mouth. He got his breathing back , felt a faint murmur in his chest, used the coat off his back as a blanket to keep the man warm. The motionless face forever ingrained in his brain. Sandy hair, blue face, piercing gray eyes. Laugh lines around his slightly parted lips.
In the end the ambulance gets there too late and the poor 23 year old runner was pronounced dead at the scene. Her father didn’t come home that night, called Holtz from his holding cell the next morning. His court case came soon after. Vehicular manslaughter. Life in prison.
I tend to think about him while driving at nighttime, this remains the case now as I drive a buzzed Holtz back to her apartment at 3 am almost 2 years after the accident.
“Do you ever think about what it would be like with my dad still around?” she asks, reading my mind. I hum at her reassuring. “yeah”.
“I think about how he’d feel about me going to college, if I’d drink as much as I do now, if he’d be okay with me being gay”. I condemn the idea that he wouldn’t accept her. “He loved you, he wouldn’t care who you love”.
A pause lulls as we turn down her street. “Sometimes it’s easier to pretend he’s dead, not rotting away in cage 300 miles away. That way he would at least be with my mom. He would be at peace too, no guilt eating at him, not worrying about me.” She’s tipsy. I know that. She gets really into her emotions when alcohol is involved. It’s easy to get used to drunks who puke repeatedly, cry hysterically, or dance unabashedly, but becoming unaffected by the weight of real raw emotion only uncovered in moments of drunken solidarity was something I had yet to get used to. I chose to ignore it like most other times, let her feel out the enigma of the moment before taking the key from the ignition and making my way inside knowing she’ll follow.
Her apartment is small, but gets the job done of giving her a bed to sleep in each night. Her rent is paid through what’s left of her mom’s will, all left to her, and money left from her father. Her life expenses paid for from her job at a local CVS. Minimum wage works now and financial aid will cover most if not all of her college expenses.
A twin bed lies in the corner of a square room, quaint kitchen adjacent to it. A two seated couch not far from the bed, a TV, and a bathroom. Just living space, nothing extravagant. Her fridge buzzes all through the night, there’s a draft, and her upstairs neighbors have a baby who cries through the night, but rent is cheap, and there aren’t any rats.
The purple bruise forming on her face weeps for attention but she pays it no mind. “You should put some ice on your cheek.” Walking toward the kitchen, I think she’s taking my advice.
She opens the buzzing fridge, taking out a bottle of vodka that always seems full from the middle shelf. The heavy glass container hits the surface of the small kitchen table that only fits two chairs. A solo cup follows suit. I’m ready to stop her from this mess under the precaution that she’s already a little tipsy. I know she’s had more than the beer I watched her inhale earlier, because her tolerance is too high for the beer to be causing this many audible gears to be turning in her brain. She offers me the seat across from where she’s standing. It’s not until she offers me the filled solo cup in a small voice that I realize that maybe she isn’t as far gone as I had thought. “I know you wanted to test it out tonight, but everyone around made you uncomfortable. You can do it now if you’d like, no one waiting to take advantage. I’ll be here to make sure you’re okay, but it’s alright if you don’t want to”. I’m confused once more as she speaks in calm complete sentences. Drunk Holtzmann is ever the intellectual, still able to write last minute A+ essays under the influence, articulate us out of sticky situations with police, convince me she’s sober. She remains caring about not only my well being, but my feelings and I’m never sure what to do with it all.
Regardless of her mental state, I make my decision fueled by the notion that she protects those that she loves. I take the cup in my hands, sizing up the clear liquid starring back at me. I smell the vile contacts and gag involuntarily. She chuckles. “What?” I deadpan, abruptly furious at the cute twitch of her smile. “Don’t you think its kind of ironic that your run of the mill teenage alcoholic is best friends with the girl who’s never even been buzzed”.
“You’re not an alcoholic”. I’m too consumed by her ability to smile so earnestly after talking about her dead mother and incarcerated father less than 10 minutes ago. Perhaps the affects of her “one beer” have worn off since then. I don’t assure the irony of the situation or even attempt to mirror her carefree spirit.
“Alright, Er-bear.” She stares at me, a twinkle of satisfaction in her smirk. Something about her sure eyes and relaxed jaw puts me up to the challenge. I take a deep breath before bringing the cup to my mouth sipping the contents. The contents burn my throat and I cough. I expect her to laugh at my naivety, but somehow she is always soft when necessary. “you have to gulp it”. She coaxes the cup back toward me, “not too fast, but not to slow.” I try again, the vile sensation of sand paper against my trachea is more subdued this time. “why don’t we go sit down?”
On the couch I continue to drink, as she watches me. Blank face. Just taking in my small actions. “stop starring please”. “sorry, princess”. I miss the gentle prying of her eyes as soon as she tears them away, refocused on the TV as she clicks it on. The volume is low, soft murmurs, she doesn’t move to make it louder.
As I empty my cup, I begin to get warm, feel my cheeks turn red, feel the heat with my hand. I feel looser, better? A little afraid. Everything seems clear, like I’ll remember it all no problem.
I realize perhaps this assertion is wrong, when I go to speak, and can’t move my tongue. I close my eyes, collect my known knowledge, reassure myself of my safety, fight off the panic. Breathe, Holtzy is here. Everything will be fine. Swallowing grants me my speech once more. “I think it’s working”. I force out, eyes clenched, jaw slacked. “you think?” she says, “you drank about 6 ounces, I think you’re set for awhile.” I feel weak, untouchable, an abstract concept of human. Not real. I’m standing before I can tell myself not to. “Easy there, Tiger”, she insists, holding onto me, “maybe this way a bad idea, I’m sorry”.
I want to tell her that she shouldn’t be sorry. It’s not her fault. She was just trying to help. I asked for this, she delivered. I stand there. In arms, I’m suddenly feeling the strength of her. I see it all the time the hardening in her eyes, I know she’s emotionally strong, but I’m only now understanding the soft definition in the muscles of her arm. Soft fingers, she smells like the lotion I bought her. Everything is enhanced. I feel myself gasping at all the new sensations of all the things I had thought I understood.
She’s pulling me into bed, tender, covering me with blankets. She apologizes again. Tries to escape my grasp but I won’t let her. Stay with me, my eyes plead, she listens to them. She’s holding me, pressing me against her chest. Listening to her heart beat suddenly becomes something more than it used to be. A constant reminder of her existence, a safety net. Now I appreciate it more, receive the pulses as if they are my own. I’m laughing at nothing one minute, crying the next, the only concrete emotion is uncertainty. I check the clock 3:42. I close my eyes a moment. Check the time again. 5:15.
I feel it. The physical weight of Jillian against me. Familiarity. But also the weight of intoxication. No puking feeling. A head ache. A gurgling stomach. With the added weight, I still feel light. My senses still at their peak. More aware. More used to the idea. She’s asleep. Holtzmann. Freckles. Pursed lips. Steady breathing. She says she sleeps better next to another body. I let go of the inhibitions, perhaps elated by the alcohol. I let my brain be jealous of all the other bodies she’s shared beds with.
When my cuddles weren’t enough, she would seek out other forms of recreation. Guys. Girls. Anything or anyone. Desperate, not slutty. Desperate to shake things up. Restart the engine. I let myself care for once, I allow myself clarity of mind. Admit to myself that I wish I was one of those one night stands, just to feel her love me. I want tangible proof of her love. It’s selfish. But her looks only last so long. Cuddles remain friendly. Sex would at least prove desire without me having to read between the lines.
But I know I’d be even worse off if I was thrown to the side after a night of passion. She’s terrible, to herself and others, and I’m not sure why I’m in love with her. I’m just content in admitting it to myself in the dark, wrapped in her arms, still pretty drunk.
Headaches are assholes and deserve to punished. The flare of pain shoots through the front of my skull. I try to escape her prison of warmth and care, seeking some pain killers. I’m not sure if it’s the sink running or my feet padding against solid tiles, but when I come back to the bed, she’s awake, starring at me with those stupid blue eyes again. Sleepy and beautiful. “you alright?”
Why the Fuck is she always so caring? Can she stop looking at me like that? For God’s sake. “Yeah I just took some aspirin” I say, wobbly, feeling the weight of my tongue in my mouth. I’m back in bed, holding her close, breathing her in, waiting for anything she’ll allow me.
“Can you read to me something you’ve written?” She writes in the notes of her phone, when the world gets overwhelming, she says it helps her sort out her emotions. Her writing is pretty and vague. I don’t understand it sometimes. It reminds me of slush on the ground, wet socks, black roses. She picks up her phone. “What do you want to hear? A journal entry, a poem, free-form?”
“what are you working on right now?” I ask, moving back. I need to see her eyes. She blinks. I remember the blackened cloud of hurt painted on her face by a human fist. She never reads things unless they’ve had time to settle in her brain. I usually don’t hear about feelings she’s written about unless it’s 6 months later and the feeling is either long gone or deeply repressed. I know she’s afraid of sharing current emotions. She doesn’t like to give someone the ability to question a feeling when she doesn’t understand it. Waiting until a feeling is gone or at least understood, leaves no room for someone to interfere. She doesn’t share current works. I know this. She knows I know this.
She lifts her phone to her face, the light radiates from the screen, adding even more light to her eyes, makes her blush more visible. “listen, I’ll read it to you but, it’s not done okay and you can’t judge, I know it’s bad, but you asked for it”. I don’t speak, just nod at her, urge her to open her newest note and read the tantalizing words.
She breathes, steadying herself, makes herself comfortable on her back and begins to read to me. My head on her chest, I know each breath, each quiver of intensity, the vibration of every word: “I go back and forth with you a lot. It’s like tying a shoe lace, wrapping the strands over and over, the knot never catching. Insecure I am, in my understanding of you. I finish your sentences, tell others stories of your life as if I was there. But I can’t grasp your inner workers, why you withstand my travesty. I try to be good. I try to keep you safe, keep you happy. I need attention, I grab bottles for it, put myself in harms way. Bloody knuckles and dead eyes seem like the only way to your heart. I’m in, whole heartedly, ready to take you away. A land of just love. A world where the only bad thing is me, and the only good thing is us. I don’t want it though, not if there’s a chance of disaster. I ruin things. I’ve already ruined you. Made you care about me, when I don’t deserve your soft touch. Dragged you into a bond no one would wish for, not with someone as broken as me. The future is non existent and there is only now. And I may not know much about time but I do know that if there was ever a now that you weren’t in, I wouldn’t want it. I’d say goodbye to the now for good. Live in the ground instead. I’m up and down. I know you want this land of candy and rainbows too. Too many smiles and laughs and smacking me when I tease you to tell me other wise. I know you hate me, don’t want any part of my darkness. Too many tears, and panic attacks about my well being to convince me other wise. I’m toxic and you know it, clogging veins, making blood rush too fast to be normal. My own dreams are buried in the dirt along with the dead seeds and I can’t take you, a blooming flower, and rip away your petals just to bring you to my level. A cloud in the sky, full and grand, power in its heavy intentions. A barren tree dying, my leaves don’t change color in the fall, too free to listen to any rules, to any direction, to anything trying to help me. I want to stray from the cloud, dye on my own, rework my branches into paper for school, for walls of a home. But your raindrops do help, quench my thirst long enough to prolong my demise. And the sunrise. And the rain shower takes over, drenching my branches and leaves start to bud. Growth where I’d thought I would find none. And now a rainbow remains and I’m out of my cage for just a second. I don’t want to be that page in a book, I want to be the whole novel. I want you to be the cover, holding me together. And whether the weather is downcast or shiny, the broken tree and the heavy cloud will meet again. I just hope our meeting never ends.”
Maybe I’m still drunk, or maybe I’m making excuses for actions I’ve always craved. Kissing her is unlike any other fulfillment. Steady, there, no where else. The empty cloud suddenly feels full again. She’s not pulling away, not pushing me back. Clear and warranted on both ends, soft murmurs of confirmed desires. A finality. Discovering buried treasure. What you thought would be a small reward turns out to be an unfathomable amount of gold. No expectations other than what is current.
My nose brushes against the nasty discoloration on her cheek. She winces. I pull away. Confronted by confounding eyes, it’s hard to articulate, not because of the alcohol this time. I figure it’s been long enough for it to be out of my system by now, but how would I know? Looking at her face, black and blue cheek, black around her eyes, enlarged pupils, bruised lips. The image sure is sobering.
“Are you still drunk?” her insecurity peaks out. “I don’t know” I say because I’m not so sure.
I get her an ice pack, wrap it with paper towels. She puts it on her face. I kiss her again. She tells me to wait until I’m sure the vodka doesn’t have any say in my actions. I do. I wait until the next day to feel our breath mingling once more. I’m sure than of the tragedy I’m willing to bear through for her. I’m sure the next day when I kiss her again and again. And the day after that. I’m certain of my desire to be her cloud over head, always watching. Sparing water when she needs it. Ensuring clear skies with kisses, and reassurance.
Relying on each other. A bee pollinating a flower. The bee takes the nectar, the flower gets to grow.
I feel drunk with her, alcohol free. Relaxed. Giddy, ready for adventure. Skip the nausea and the vomiting. No headaches. Different, free of inhibitions. No standards to conform to. No need to change, my hand already fits perfectly in hers.